Setting International Targeting In Google Search Console is good or bad for your business SEO rankings?
Webmasters working on a website’s Google Search Console (formerly Webmasters Tools) always come across setting International Target of that website. And the big question that runs in their mind is to whether or not set the Geographic target to a particular country or not.
What is Setting International Targeting in Search Console?
Google Search Console allows a website to set a target geographic location to emphasize on the traffic from that location.
By setting international targeting to a particular country you are indicating Google that;
…the content on your website is more suitable for the target audience of the selected location.
When you select a country while setting international targeting the content on your website will not be of much importance or priority to other parts of the World.
How to set International Targeting in Search Console?
Steps to set target Geographic Location in the old Search Console:
- Log in to Google Search Console
- Select the website (property) from the dropdown that you want to set target location for
- Select Search Traffic > International Targeting from the left side menu
- Click on the “Country” tab
- Select the region you want to target or select “unlisted” and Save your selection
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If you have some trouble setting up the target location then contact your SEO service provider to assist you in setting up the location.
Does Setting International Targeting affect SEO?
International Targeting is not a direct Google Ranking Factor. But it certainly does impact your website’s search engine rankings.
When you set the geographic targeting to a particular Country then Google gives your website a boost in rankings when a query is raised from that location.
Having this said, other ranking factors like On Page SEO, Off Page SEO, Mobile SEO, Responsive Web Design etc are also considered in ranking your website on the SERPS.
Before digging in deep into setting international targeting let us first understand what is TLD, ccTLD and gTLD.
TLD – Top Level Domain
The last part in a domain name is referred as a Top-level domain (TLD). Simplistically it can be understood as the part after the dot(.) in a domain name.
TLDs are further sorted into two categories:
- generic TLDs (gTLD) and
- country-specific TLDs (ccTLD).
Most common examples of TLDs are .com, .in, .org, .net, .gov, .biz and .edu.
Generic TLD (gTLD)
As the name suggests they are General TLDs, suggesting no geographic location or region in particular. This makes gTLDs the most preferred and popular types of Top Level Domains.
Some of the common examples of gTLDs are; .com, .info, .net, .org etc.
Country code top-level domain (ccTLD)
The name itself is self-explanatory. A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is a TLD which is generally used or reserved for a particular target location.
This location can be a country, a state, or even a territory identified with a country code.
Examples of a ccTLD are; .asia, .au, .in etc.
Who Should Enable International Targeting?
As per Google International Targeting is beneficial to you only if you are targeting a particular location.
To elaborate further, let us assume that your website is in “Hindi” language and it targets the audience in India. In this case it’s best advised to set the geographic location to India in the search console.
This way you signal Google that your website is of more importance to the users in India. Hence when a user searches for a related query from Asia, Google may boost your search engine ranking.
But, if your website is in a general language like “English” and does not target any location in particular then its best to leave the target as “unlisted”. This way Google understands that your website has information of use for the users worldwide.
In what scenarios should you select International Targeting?
Scenario #1 – When you are targeting particular markets with TLDs
If you have Top Level Domains pointing to a particular country code (ccTLD) the its a best practice to assign a target location respective to the Country.
For eg:
www.example.com – (gTLD) – Unlisted (do not select any location)
www.example.it – (ccTLD) – Set International Target Location to Italy
www.example.au – (ccTLD) – Set International Target Location to Australia
Scenario #2 – When you are targeting particular markets with subdomain
If your website has subdomains or sub folders targeting to specific locations, then set the international target to the sub-folders only.
For eg:
www.example.com – (gTLD) – Unlisted (do not select any location)
–>it.example.com – (sub-folder) – Set International Target Location to Italy
–>au.example.com – (sub-folder) – Set International Target Location to Australia
In the above example the example website has two sub-folders – it.example.com and au.example.com. Therefore the gTLD will NOT be pointing to any specific location. And its sub-folders will be setting international targeting to respective countries.
Scenario #3 – When you are a local business targeting multilingual audience within your country
If your business website has multilingual content for multilingual audiences in your country then instead of adding different countries for different languages. Just add the target local country on the main domain.
For eg:
www.example.ca – (ccTLD) – Set International Target Location to Canada
–>www.example.ca/fr/ – Unlisted (Set target on the domain level)
–>www.example.ca/es/ – Unlisted (Set target on the domain level)
In the above example a website example.ca has content in two different languages to suit their local multilingual users. Therefore, just set the geographic location for the main domain to Canada. And for the language specific domains set the target on the domain level only.
This is because if you will set the target location to France for example.ca/fr/ then Google will not understand that this setting is for French speaking users in Canada.
When should you not assign International Target?
If your aim is to target the users Worldwide then assigning a particular country in Search Console is not a good idea.
Although by assigning a country you will experience a boost in rankings from that country, but it will cost you much more. The bounce rate of your website will increase because it will be demoted for the rest of the world.
Let us understand this in details with an example.
As per the above example let us assume that a Website has 100,000 searches globally for a web page. And this leads to us assuming that the same web page will have around 10,000 searches in a particular country.
This means that by restricting the website to a particular country you are restricting its access and exposure to lesser queries.
While the CTR can be high in your selected country, because of a better ranking positions. But again the percentage of exposure in just one country is way less as opposed to the whole world (10,000<100,00).
Whereas if your target audience are global and you have not selected any location preference then Google will spread your search appearance and ranking in different countries. Therefore you get a high chance to get more leads and more traffic from all over the world.
Opt for “Unlisted” i.e. do not select any location in the search console if your target is to rank better globally.
You must not play hit and trial with setting international targeting. It can harm your website’s SEO rankings drastically. And it has been noticed that it takes several months or more time for the previous rankings to show up.
Therefore set up a geographic location only and only if your website targets a particular language/region/country.
Should technical bloggers assign a Geographic Target?
No, it is not recommended.
This is due to the reason that knowledge sharing is not restricted to a particular country. For example; if someone writes about WordPress Website Designing, then the content in it will hold true for USA, UK, India and other countries too.
Summary of Setting International Targeting
As it is clear from the above facts a website owner should only select a particular country if the content in that website really caters to one specific country only.
But if a website caters globally then its best advised to not assign any country in the search console.
If you have any doubt regarding setting up International targeting then you can reach our SEO Agency in India to assist setting it up for you.
You May also be interested to read:
Why do you need a professional SEO Agency to manage your business website SEO
What is a Sitemap and is it Important for SEO?
How to use images on your business website for competitive edge
Mobile SEO mistakes small businesses should avoid in 2019
Global Electronics and Telecom Systems Dominates 17 Keywords in 3 Months
Why did SEO Traffic Drop after Website Redesign?
What do you think or expect when you get your website redesigned? It should look good, perform better than before and obviously increased ROI. Right? But what if it looks good now, but you lose the initial SEO traffic after redesigning.
Don’t panic.
Instead move ahead towards the solutions, for which finding the exact problem is crucial.
It may have happened because your website designing agency was not careful about a certain steps which are a mandate to at least maintain the initial SEO traffic.
The major reasons identified for the drop in SEO traffic include:
Be Realistic
Website owners must understand that after redesigning of website some percentage of existing SEO traffic will be decreased. This happens because Google has to assess the pages, design and the content of the website again.
How much is not Too Much?
A drop range of 5% – 7% in SEO traffic is expected after the redesigning of a website. Anything more than this means that something definitely went wrong while the transition and serious attention should be paid.
How much time will it take to reach Initial SEO traffic?
If the drop in SEO traffic is within the above mentioned range then the initial results will be recovered in a few weeks. But otherwise it’s directly proportional. The higher the drop percentage the longer time it will take to get back to the initial results.
Important: Relying simply on the traffic numbers is not wise. A good SEO company will also take a look at Conversion data. Because there can be chances of low traffic but high conversion rate.
Why Did Your SEO Traffic Go Down After Redesigning of Your Website?
If you have not taken necessary precautions while redesigning your website, you will end up losing high percentage of your SEO traffic. This percentage can go upto 60-70% which can cost you high loss in terms of money.
We have listed the major reasons responsible for the drop in existing SEO traffic so that you can benefit from it by correcting them beforehand itself.
Redirects Were Ignored
What are Redirects?
Redirects send the users to the new page location when they try to visit the old page. They will tell the search engines to give the old authority/rank of your pages to the new pages of your website.
Why is it important to set up Redirects?
If you have not set up Redirects then the users/visitors of your website will get errors when they visit your site’s pages. This will happen as the page address of your old website have now been changed. For example; if the contact page of your old website was www.abc.com/firm/contact/ and now after redesigning it is www.abc.com/contact/ then obviously users will get the error when they visit www.abc.com/firm/contact/ as this page no longer exists.
These errors will transfer this information to the search engines that you have poor content, and down goes your site rankings.
What should be done to correct this?
Set up 301 redirects as this will inform the search engines to transfer the rankings from the old page to the new page, as well as send users from the old page to the new page.
It is important that redirects should be written from the old page to a matching page on new site. Do not redirect every old page to the new home page.
Importance of Setting Correct Codes
The error codes that your website returns when redirects have not been set up affects the rankings of your website. To illustrate, 404 error shows up when a user tries to visit a page that no longer exists. Though, sometimes 200 error code substitutes which is a success code with the unexpected result of informing Google your site has a ton of duplicate content.
It is crucial that when you set up the redirects, they should be 301 or permanent redirects not 302 or moved temporarily. This will move the page authority to the new one without damaging the overall SERP of your website.
Site Architecture
What is Site Architecture?
A site architecture is basically the layout of your web pages. In the language of Search Engines, a site architecture supports with crawlability and indexation. It is crucial for SEO as the layout holds an important place in number of pages getting indexed in the Search Engine. This eventually impacts the capacity of traffic to your website by Search Engines.
What should be the Site Architecture like?
Site architecture or hierarchy should be such that the pages which are most important and relevant should be easily retrieved.
Google authorizes assessment from one page to the next through internal links. The pages will receive more or less value depending on where the pages are located in the hierarchy of the website.
Pages which are multiple clicks away from the important pages (generally homepage or category pages) gain less value compared to those which are placed closer.
How is SEO Traffic affected when you change the Site Architecture?
Google values and ranks the pages in a website based on its target topic. That topic necessitates some value (link juice) or a decent score to compete with the competitors. This value or link juice is achieved by hyperlinking which is seen as votes by search engines recommending that your page is valuable and worth promoting.
When a website is made again it can change the internal linking causing some pages to have less internal links or they can now be linked to from pages which have less value to pass. The new hierarchy or layout reasons pages to receive less value or score. Due to this the score of the page lowers which in turn lowers the SEO traffic for that topic.
Change in Website Content
Changes in a website design also cover certain amount of or complete change in content. This does not include minor linguistic changes. Rather we are talking about major changes to the target topics of a page, and where in the content are these significant topics placed.
Why does it affect the SEO Traffic?
The changes in content makes search engines to re-assess the authenticity and value of that page for the primary topic. If for some reason the primary keywords no longer exist in the key SEO areas like title tags, header tags, body copy, alt text etc., then the relevant score will drop, and with it the SEO traffic and search engine rankings.
Important: For this reason you must learn which keywords and topics have high ROI and traffic seeking capability. This will save you from unintentional loss of SERP.
Deleting Web Pages
Deleting the web pages in a redesign creates content gap which causes a drop in the SEO traffic.
In the expectation of creating an enhanced journey for the users, website owners accidentally create a content gaps in their websites. This gap caused by removing pages leads to a drop down of previously ranked pages and also a drop in SEO traffic of those targeted topics.
Site maps
Last but in no sense the least is your website’s sitemap. It is imperative that Google understands the structure of your site. Site map makes it easier for search engines to walk through your website. So, if Google still has the old sitemap page that no longer exists, the requests will return errors. This will drop your SEO traffic and will also have a negative impact on rankings.
If you have activated SSL in your new website, which by the way you should; then remember if your sitemap does not match the protocol of your website, search engine will not be able to crawl it correctly.
It is always a good thing to move or to change for good. But it does not harm to take the precautions. Yeah?
I have tried to cover almost all the reasons which are responsible for bringing down the SEO traffic after redesigning of a website. If yo happen to know of other reasons too please feel free to write me at here.